hsrtforF^mtmry  publications.  NO". 


'Cl)c  ojijolution  of  li^ctu  Ccjstanicnt  €nticii5m  aiiD  tijc 
ConiBiequent  <i^utlooft  for  Co:;2Dap 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

(IF 

MELANCTHON    WILLIAMS    JACOBUS 

hosmer  profkssor  of  new  testament  exegesis 
October  5,  1892 


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H^IRTFORD  SEMINARY  PUBLICATIONS.  NO.  26 

INEW  series! 


€l)e  *e\Jolution  of  j^eU)  OTe^tamcnt  Cnticii^m  anti  tl)c 
€oni8icquent  ODutlook  for  Co^^SDap 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

OF  / 

MELANCTHON    WILLIAMS    JACOBUS 

hosmer  professor  of  new  testament  exegesis 
October  5,  1892 


IbartforD  Seminars  iprcBs 

Hartford,  Conn. 
1892 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT  CRITI- 
CISM, AND  THE  CONSEQUENT  OUTLOOK 
FOR   TO-DAY. 

INAUGURAL  ADDRESS   OF   MELANCTHON   W.  JACOBUS, 

Hosmer  Professor  of   New  Testament   Exegesis. 

October  5,  1892. 


I  cannot  stand  here  this  evening  without  confessing  to 
peculiar  feelings,  even  for  such  an  occasion  as  this.  My  election 
to  the  chair  of  New  Testament  Exegesis  and  Literature  in  this 
Seminary  places  me  in  the  following  of  remarkable  men  —  men 
who  were  noted  for  their  scholarship  and  for  their  influence 
over  the  world  in  which  they  moved  —  men  who  by  their  aptness 
to  teach  were  felt  in  the  class-room,  by  their  ability  to  write  were 
known  in  literary  life,  and  by  their  power  to  accomplish  were 
honored  by  the  Church.  Now,  did  my  work  stand  before  me 
to-night  untried,  this  would  nevertheless  mean  very  much  to 
me.  But  a  year's  attempted  efforts  make  me  realize  its  mean- 
ing in  a  very  peculiar  way,  for  I  have  actually  seen  how  hard  it 
is,  and  will  always  be,  to  walk  worthily  in  the  way  that  has  been 
thus  marked  out  for  me.  Were  I  not  therefore  persuaded  that 
no  man's  work  results  in  anything  unless  in  itself  it  be  a  strug- 
gle, and  were  I  not  sure  that  to  the  struggle  of  a  professor's 
work,  as  well  as  to  that  of  a  minister's,  there  is  a  divine  call, 
with  its  promise  of  sustaining  and  enabling  grace,  I  would  stop 
even  now  and  turn  aside  from  the  course  that  here  awaits  me. 
But  in  spite  of  a  year's  humbling  experience,  I  am  persuaded 
and  I  am  sure,  and  so  I  have  nothing  else  to  do  but  trustingly 
to  enter  in  upon  it,  —  which  in  God's  name  and  with  God's  help  I 
do.  And  so,  in  obedience  to  the  traditions  which  gather  around 
the  professor's  chair,  in  an  institution  such  as  this,  I  present  to 
you  a  theme  which  holds  a  prominent  place  in  my  thinking 
about  the  department  over  which  I  am  called  to  preside. 

(O 


One  of  Germany's  noted  theologians,  for  more  than  a  gener- 
ation professor  at  one  of  her  noted  universities,  has  said  con- 
cerning the  present  biblical  criticism  :  "  We  have  had  too  many 
experiences  in  this  respect,  have  seen  too  many  hypotheses 
come  and  go  [to  be  w^orried  at  the  criticism  that  is  abroad  to-day]. 
Who  knows  what  grave-diggers  already  stand  at  the  door  ?  We 
older  ones  had  experience  in  Baur's  criticism  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  some  of  us  took  an  active  part  in  opposing  it. 
Where  is  that  criticism  now  ?  How  startling  was  Strauss  in 
his  day.  But  who  is  there  now  that  has  not  abandoned  the 
theory  that  the  life  of  Jesus  consists  in  myths  .-'  How  many  in 
Germany,  even  in  scientific  circles,  compromised  themselves  by 
their  attitude  toward  Renan's  life  of  Christ .-'  But  who  now 
speaks  seriously  of  the  French  romance .-' "  I  have  referred  to 
Dr.  Luthardt's  words  as  an  apology  for  what  must  seem,  as  I 
make  it,  a  very  commonplace  remark,  and  that  is,  that  there  is 
progress  in  history  in  spite  of  the  revolutions  which  seem  to 
mark  its  way.  There  is  constant  movement  and  advance, 
although  action  and  reaction  seem  to  be  so  largely  at  work. 
All  history  is  so.  For  all  history  is  one.  One  God  is  behind  it. 
One  man  is  within  it.  It  is  the  one  life  that  embraces  all 
living.  So,  whether  we  take  up  the  history  of  races  or  religions, 
of  churches  or  creeds,  of  systems  of  doctrine  or  organizations 
of  work,  we  find  in  each  a  development,  although  by  alterna- 
tions. We  may  expect  to  find  it,  then,  in  the  history  of  New 
Testament  criticism.  Advance,  progress,  development,  in  spite 
of  action  and  reaction  underneath  it  all.  And  if  we  so  find  it, 
our  finding  will  have  a  very  valuable  lesson  for  us  to-day.  I 
am  perfectly  aware,  however,  commonplace  as  this  statement 
is,  that  it  goes  for  nothing  unless  there  be  at  hand  the  historic 
proof  that  it  is  true, —  which  brings  us  to  what  I  propose  as  our 
theme  for  this  evening, —  T/ie  evoliUion  of  New  Testament 
criticism  and  the  consequent  outlook  for  to-day. 

New  Testament  criticism  is  mostly  made  to  begin  with  the 
Reformation  age.  I  venture  to  say  that  so  to  begin  it  is  wrong. 
It  is  to  be  admitted,  of  course,  that  the  great  work  of  criticism 
has  been  done  since  the  Reformation  time.  But  criticism  was 
before  the  Reformation  began,  before  the  Renaissance,  before  the 
days  of  Augustine  and  Jerome,  before  the  golden  age  of  the 


Alexandrian  School.  However  faulty  it  may  have  been  in  its 
method  and  process  of  work,  however  lacking  in  its  spirit, 
criticism  of  some  sort  and  kind  was  practised  from  the  bej^in- 
ning  of  Bible  study  in  the  Christian  Church.  To  make  that 
evident  to  ourselves  we  have  simply  to  remember  the  neces- 
sities that  rested  upon  the  early  Church.  When  the  apostolic 
age  was  over  and  the  early  fathers  found  themselves  alone  in 
the  world,  their  first  work  was  necessarily  the  apologetic  of 
bringing  out  the  real  harmony  of  the  past  with  their  Gospel,  — 
which  meant  the  study  of  the  Old  Testament  scripture.  And, 
as  Christianity  worked  itself  out  into  the  world,  their  next  work 
became  necessarily  the  apologetic  of  holding  forth  the  real 
power  of  their  Gospel  for  mankind  around  them,  which  meant 
the  study  of  the  New  Testament  scripture,  and  further,  as  out 
of  the  Church  there  developed  those  who  had  followed  their 
own  opinions  rather  than  the  Word  of  God,  there  came  neces- 
sarily on  both  sides, —  outside  the  Church  on  the  part  of  the 
attacking  heresies,  and  inside  the  Church  on  the  part  of  the  de- 
fending faith, —  a  fresh  study  of  Old  and  New  Testaments  alike. 
Outside  the  Church  the  Bible  was  studied  by  heretical  fathers, 
to  reconcile  it  with  their  systems.  Inside  the  Church  it  was 
studied  by  orthodox  fathers  to  make  its  true  interpretation  plain. 
Now,  granted  the  mental  poverty  and  fault  of  this  early 
biblical  study,  it  was  critical  nevertheless  just  in  so  far  forth  as 
it  had  to  do  with  the  documents  involved.  If  there  was  touched 
in  this  study  the  origin  or  authorship  or  structure  or  character 
of  the  Bible  books,  then  there  was  criticism,  whatever  its  merit 
or  demerit  may  have  been.  If  in  this  study  a  book  was 
accepted  as  Scripture  or  rejected  as  non-Scripture,  then  there 
was  criticism,  whatever  the  reasons  for  the  accepting  or  the 
rejecting  may  have  been  ;  and  if  we  are  going  to  study  the 
development  of  criticism,  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore  the 
attitude  which  these  early  critics  assumed  toward  the  docu- 
ments before  them,  and  the  method  which  they  pursued  in  their 
investigation. 

It  is  a  matter  of  interest,  then,  to  recall  the  fact  that  the 
critical  work  of  the  first  two  centuries  was  based  on  internal 
grounds,  that  is,  on  evidence  contained  within  the  documents 
themselves.  And  this  was  not  simply  with  reference  to  the 
Old  Testament,  concerning  whose  Mosaic  and  Prophetic  origin 


there  was  then  no  suggestion  of  doubt,  but  with  reference  to 
the  New  Testament,  whose  separate  books,  those  not  yet 
gathered  together  into  the  official  canon  of  the  Church,  were 
acknowledged  the  historical  documents  we  hold  them  to  be  to- 
day. And  this  statement  gains  significance  when  we  remind 
ourselves  that  this  was  true  not  only  of  the  fathers  who 
studied  the  New  Testament  inside  the  Church,  but  also  of  the 
heretics  who  studied  it  outside  the  Church.  They  never 
denied  the  historic  origin  of  the  New  Testament  books.  They 
threw  some  of  them  aside,  but  it  was  because  they  did  not 
accept  their  teaching.  The  Ebionites  discarded  Paul's  writings, 
not  because  they  denied  there  was  a  Paul,  or  that  he  wrote,  but 
because  they  could  not  accept  his  theology.  The  Marcionitcs 
rejected  all  the  apostles'  writings  except  some  of  Paul's ; 
because  only  Paul  and  only  this  part  of  Paul  agreed  with  their 
views.  Basilides  and  his  followers  rejected  the  Pastoral 
Epistles  and  Hebrews,  not  because  they  did  not  find  them 
genuine,  but  because  they  found  in  them  their  own  ideas  con- 
demned. And  it  was  this  same  position  that  the  later  heresies 
assumed  towards  the  New  Testament  books.  The  heresy  of 
Praxeas  and  Theodotus  regarding  the  Trinity  admitted  the  New 
Testament  scriptures  as  historic  documents  entire,  and  ac- 
cepted them  as  the  common  ground  of  controversy.  With 
them  it  was  simply  a  question  of  interpretation.  The  spiritual- 
istic heresy  of  Montanus  defended  itself  from  the  accepted 
New  Testament  books.  The  whole  attitude  of  post-apostolic 
criticism,  even  the  opposing  and  attacking  criticism  outside  the 
Church,  was  one  of  acceptance  of  the  historic  fact  of  the  New 
Testament  books.  That  fact  was,  in  that  age,  such  a  fact  was 
so  evident,  so  clear,  so  unquestioned  that  there  was  no  other 
attitude  to  take.  However  faulty,  their  criticism  may  have 
been,  its  faults  were  confined  to  the  methods  which  they  pur- 
sued in  their  internal  critical  work. 

But  as  the  Church  grew  away  from  apostolic  times,  its  own 
attitude  and  that  of  its  opponents  toward  the  Bible  documents 
changed,  and  the  apostolic  books  began  to  be  acknowledged  or 
questioned  on  the  basis  of  the  relative  presence  or  absence  of 
external  testimony  from  the  earlier  Church  in  their  behalf.  It 
needs  no  special  argument  to  show  that  this  was  a  perfectly 
«  natural  change ;  we  might  almost  say  its  coming  was  inevitable, 


5 

for  distance  from  the  sources  made  independent  testimony  im- 
portant. The  fact  that  the  documents  were  a  century  old  made 
it  necessary  to  have  external  evidence  concerning  them.  The 
Church  was  no  longer  in  the  self-conscious  atmosphere  of  the 
after-apostolic  age,  when  apostolic  facts  were  so  real  as  not  to 
call  for  proving.  It  was  entering  now  upon  its  actual  life  in 
the  world,  where  it  stood  before  men  on  the  evidence  of  its  his- 
toric origins,  so  that  as  its  foes  attacked  it,  or  its  friends 
defended  it,  the  appeal  was  to  antiquity  against  or  for.  It  was, 
therefore,  what  we  might  expect  that  the  systems  of  error  which 
had  departed  from  the  faith  should  now  attempt  to  deal  with 
the  unacceptable  books  of  the  Canon  on  added  historic  grounds. 
So  we  see  the  Manichxan  gnostics  freely  altering  the  New 
Testament  text  to  suit  their  views,  because  they  held  its  books 
to  have  been  of  much  later  origin  than  Christ  and  the  apostles, 
and  to  have  been  greatly  corrupted  since  their  composition. 
And  it  was  also  what  we  might  expect  that  within  the  Church 
certain  books  began  to  be  disputed  and  questioned  because  of 
the  relative  lack  of  historic  witness  in  their  behalf.  So  we  see 
Origen,  while  questioning  the  Paulinity  of  Hebrews  because  of 
its  internal  character,  putting  down  Second  Peter  as  historically 
disputed  in  the  Church,  and  Second  and  Third  John  as  not  ad- 
mitted of  all  to  be  genuine  ;  while  we  find  Euscbius  referring 
the  final  decision  of  the  internally  disputed  Apocalypse  to  the 
testimony  of  the  ancients.  So  Jerome,  in  spite,  apparently,  of 
personal  doubts  as  to  the  authorship  of  some  of  the  books,  ac- 
cepted them  all  as  canonical  on  the  authority  of  ancient  writers. 
And  Augustine,  in  his  essay  on  Christian  Doctrine,  held  that  in 
judging  of  the  canonical  scriptures  we  are  to  follow  the  author- 
ity of  as  many  Catholic  Churches  as  possible,  preferring  those 
books  which  were  accepted  by  all  the  Churches  to  those  which 
some  did  not  receive.  In  fact,  the  New  Testament  books 
now  became  classified  according  to  whether  they  were  acknowl- 
edged or  questioned  ;  and  that  acknowledging  or  questioning 
was  determined  according  to  the  relative  presence  or  absence  of 
testimony  by  the  early  Church  in  their  behalf.  Thus,  by  the 
end  of  the  fourth  century  the  attitude  of  criticism  toward  the 
New  Testament  documents  had  completely  changed.  Books 
now  were  accepted  or  rejected,  not  on  the  internal  basis  of  their 
teaching,  but  on  the  external  basis   of  the  ancient  testimony 


regarding  them ;  so  that,  however  narrow  its  horizon  may  have 
been,  and  however  little  it  may  have  entered  into  the  spirit  of 
true  critical  work,  the  criticism  of  this  period  opened  the  way 
for  the  critical  results  of  modern  times,  by  bringing  into  con- 
sideration for  the  canonicity  of  New  Testament  books  the 
historic  evidence  of  their  apostolic  origin.  And  these  results 
of  modern  criticism  would  have  been  forthcoming  long  before 
our  day  had  not  this  fourth  century  narrowness  of  horizon  and 
littleness  of  scholarly  spirit  increased,  and  by  its  increase 
brought  down  upon  the  Church  the  darkness  and  death  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  Under  its  pall,  naturally  and  necessarily,  the 
appeal  to  antiquity  became  a  purely  formal  and  fossilized  affair ; 
so  that  the  canon  was  accepted  simply  because  the  Church  said 
it  was  to  be  accepted,  and  the  Church  said  so  simply  because  it 
made  no  effort  to  find  out  whether  there  was  anything  else  to 
be  said.  And  the  Scriptures  themselves  came  to  be  interpreted 
not  by  a  present  study  of  them,  but  by  a  quoting  of  the  study 
that  had  been  done  before.  And  so,  whatever  science  there 
had  been  in  the  Church's  critical  work  died  out,  and  the 
Church's  knowledge  of  her  own  historic  origin  disappeared,  and 
the  Church's  faith  changed  to  superstition,  and  the  Church's 
life  became  corrupt,  and  the  world  grew  sick  of  everything  that 
was  called  by  her  name. 

It  was  a  dark  picture,  but  we  understand  to-day  how  its 
darkness  was,  in  the  ordering  of  Providence,  the  best  back- 
ground for  the  light  that  was  to  come  through  the  Renaissance 
and  the  Reformation.  Necessarily  at  first  that  light  was  but  a 
glimmer.  The  day  doesn't  dawn  with  a  meridian  sun.  But  this 
dawning  glimmer  fell  upon  everything  of  the  Church  and 
touched,  in  its  falling,  the  Church's  criticism.  Its  results  were 
not  surprising.  It  simply  brought  about  another  reaction.  The 
argument  from  authority  began  to  be  questioned,  then  opposed, 
then  given  up,  and  the  reformers  placed  themselves  squarely 
upon  the  argument  from  the  internal  character  of  the  books 
themselves.  As  Luther  found  the  Gospel  in  them,  he  accepted 
them ;  as  he  did  not,  he  laid  them  aside,  at  least  upon  a  lower 
level  of  acceptance.  As  Calvin  found  in  them  evidence  of  true 
doctrine,  he  accepted  them ;  as  he  failed  to  find  it,  he  brought 
them  into  question.  Beza  accepted  the  whole  canonical  list, 
because  he  found  in  it  all  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 


Now,  modern  scholars  arc  very  fond  of  sayinj;  that,  subject- 
ive as  this  attitude  of  the  Reformation  criticism  was,  it  had  be- 
hind it  the  bcL;inninL;-  of  that  scientific  spirit  of  real  historic 
inquiry  which  has  characterized  the  Church's  criticism  in  these 
modern  days.  We  have  no  quarrel  with  this  assertion.  We 
are  perfectly  willinrj  to  acknowledge  the  presence  of  this  spirit  in 
Reformation  times,  but  our  review  of  patristic  criticism  has 
shown  us  that  its  beginnings  were  far  back  of  this,  at  the  very 
point  in  the  Church's  history  where  they  first  became  necessary, 
at  the  point  of  the  Alexandrian  School,  when  the  Church  had 
lived  long  enough  to  make  historic  study  of  her  New  Testament 
books  a  scholarly  need.  The  ignorance  of  the  .Middle  Ages 
broke  in  upon  these  beginnings  and  stopped  their  growth, 
destroyed  them,  in  fact,  and  swept  them  away.  But  the  learning 
of  the  Renaissance  brought  them  into  life  again,  and  now, 
under  the  new  vitality  of  the  Reformation,  they  had  before 
them  the  possibility  of  becoming  a  true  and  serviceable  criti- 
cism for  the  Church. 

It  becomes  an  interesting  question,  then,  with  which  we  are 
immediately  confronted.  How  was  it  that,  instead  of  realizing 
that  possibility,  they  sank  away  again  out  of  sight,  and  in  their 
place  grew  up  the  new  scholasticism  of  Church  usage  that  deter- 
mined the  canon  according  to  custom  and  relegated  criticism 
again  to  the  universe  of  unknown  things  ?  That  question  is 
answered  by  remembering  that  purely  subjective  criticism  can 
never  give  a  standing-ground  to  the  Church.  Its  tendency  is 
inevitably  toward  the  destruction  of  the  Bible  by  shivering  it 
into  the  thousand  pieces  of  individual  opinion.  We  see  this 
in  the  handling  of  the  canon  by  the  early  heretics,  in  spite 
of  the  historic  realities  of  the  apostolic  age,  in  the  light  of 
which  they  yet  stood.  We  see  it  also  in  the  free  handling  of 
the  Bible  books  in  which  Luther  and  his  followers  indulged. 
But  the  Reformation  Church  needed  Bible  standing-ground,  if 
it  needed  anything  at  all.  As  a  natural  consequence,  therefore, 
it  came  to  abandon  this  subjective  attitude  toward  the  Scrip- 
ture. But,  ignorant  yet  of  the  true  position  it  was  to  hold,  or, 
at  least,  careless  of  the  hints  it  might  have  gathered  from  the 
past,  at  all  events  neglectful  of  its  work,  it  allowed  itself  to 
drift  into  the  opposite  extreme  of  the  attitude  of  external  usage, 
so  that,  before  the  Reformation   century  was  over,   the   New 


8 

Testament  came  to  be  formally  accepted,  as  a  whole,  without 
note  or  comment,  and  with  the  old  lines  of  acknowledged  and 
disputed  books  completely  cast  aside,  and  was  thus  withdrawn 
from  the  whole  field  of  historical  inquiry  as  entirely  as  it  had 
been  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  by  the  restrictive  rulings 
of  the  Council  of  Trent. 

Now,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that,  in  such  condition  of 
affairs  as  this,  there  was  need  not  merely  of  reaction  but  of 
reconstruction  in  Biblical  criticism, — for  the  Reformation  was 
making  a  mockery  of  itself.  In  that  great  movement  thinking 
Christianity  had  cut  loose  from  the  Church  of  Rome ;  had 
thrown  herself  out  into  the  world,  with  one  mission,  to  preach 
the  Bible,  with  one  aim,  to  study  the  Word  of  God,  to  under- 
stand it,  to  make  it  known  to  men.  Her  sacred  business  was 
to  get  at  the  Bible  facts  and  tell  them,  to  discover  the  Bible 
truths  and  unlock  them.  And  now,  here  it  was  with  its  Bible 
wrapped  up  in  a  napkin  and  buried  in  the  earth,  forgetful  of  the 
calling  to  which  God  had  consecrated  it,  scornful  of  the  birth- 
right He  had  given  it,  a  slothful,  if  not  a  wicked  servant.  But 
God  punishes  churches  as  well  as  men.  He  punished  the 
Reformation  Church.  For  this  new  scholasticism  having 
reduced  religion  to  an  absurdity,  a  new  apologetic  was  called  for 
and  it  was  offered,  but  it  was  offered  by  rationalism.  It  was  a 
shrewd  move  on  the  part  of  the  old  foe  of  the  Church,  and  it 
was  successful.  The  offer  was  accepted,  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury opened  with  reason  established  as  the  champion  of  the 
Bible.  She  proclaimed  herself  the  restorer  of  the  Scriptures  to 
their  rightful  place  of  power  in  the  world,  and  in  that  act  made 
herself  the  mistress  of  the  Word  of  God,  and  trampled  it  under 
her  feet.  She  began,  proving  the  Bible  true  by  showing  it  to 
be  in  harmony  with  herself.  She  ended,  proving  the  Bible 
false  by  showing  it  was  beyond  herself,  for  everything  in  the 
Bible  was  subjected  to  the  test  of  herself,  and  so  she  became 
authority  in  place  of  the  historic  Spirit  of  God. 

But  all  this  while,  since  the  eighteenth  century  began,  there 
had  been  coming  into  the  study  of  the  Church  a  scientific  criti- 
cism. It  had  been  the  need  of  Protestantism  from  the  begin- 
ning ;  but  so  far  there  had  only  been  hintings  at  it.  The 
reformers  had  breathed  somewhat  of  its  spirit,  even  at  the  low 
level   at  which  they  stood.      But   these   breathings  had  been 


smothered  at  the  lower  level  of  the  follovvinc^  scholasticism. 
Now,  however,  under  the  influence  of  rationalism,  in  its  reac- 
tion from  this  scholasticism,  scientific  criticism  began  to  take 
to  itself  shape  and  form. 

But  I  want  to  stop  just  here  and  make  clear  what  scientific 
criticism  is,  and  I  cannot  do  that  better  than  to  point  back  to 
the  Alexandrian  School  and  call  your  attention  to  the  position 
which  Origen,  Dionysius,  and  the  scholars  of  that  famous  period 
assumed.  For  it  will  be  noticed  that  their  merit  lay,  not  in 
holding  external  evidence  to  the  exclusion  of  internal  evidence, 
but  in  addition  to  it.  They  opened  the  way  for  modern  criti- 
cism in  adding  external  evidence  to  the  internal  evidence  already 
used,  Origen  questioned  the  immediate  Pauline  authorship  of 
Hebrews,  because  of  its  internal  character,  but  he  strengthened 
his  doubt  by  the  weakness  of  the  historic  evidence  in  the 
Church  to  such  an  authorship.  Dionysius,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  he  doubted  on  internal  grounds  that  the  Apocalypse  was 
from  the  apostle  John,  admitted  the  historic  proof  of  its  can- 
onicity.  Both  kinds  of  evidence,  internal  and  external,  were 
taken  into  account.  It  was  simply  what  would  have  been  done 
in  the  earliest  age  of  the  Church,  if  there  had  been  any  idea 
that  a  formal  appeal  to  historic  facts  was  necessary ;  and  it  was 
done  now  because  it  was  the  first  time  the  need  of  it  had 
appeared.  It  is  in  this  combination  of  the  internal  and  external 
that  the  essence  of  scientific  criticism  consists.  Scientific  criti- 
cism is,  on  the  one  hand,  the  study  of  the  books  themselves  in 
their  language  and  style  and  thought,  in  their  personal  andi 
historical  and  geographical  references.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  the  study  of  all  the  historic  testimony  of  every  kind,  in  any 
way  concerning  them,  in  and  out  of  the  Church,  back  to  the  ear- 
liest times.  But  the  combination  of  these  results  is  made  on  the 
principle  that  the  exegetic  opinion  must  always  stand  subordin- 
ate to  the  historic  fact.  Exegesis,  however  it  may  throw  light 
upon  uncertain  history  and  place  it  in  its  true  position,  must 
always  be  wrong  where  it  contradicts  history's  plain  and  proven 
facts.  So  men  have  been  led  to  call  our  discipline  "historic 
criticism."  It  was  this  sort  of  criticism  that  the  Church  of  the 
Reformation  had  needed  from  the  beginning.  Perhaps  it  was 
too  much  to  expect  it  of  that  Church.  Perhaps  the  material 
for  it,  in  the  men  themselves  and  in  their  critical  resources,  was 
Oct.  &  Dec— 2 


10 

insufficient  to  make  it  possible  at  first.  But  scholarship  had 
been  growing  toward  that,  in  the  Church  and  out  of  it,  and  now 
under  the  influence  of  rationalism  it  came  to  its  reality. 

But  now  I  want  to  make  another  thing  clear,  namely,  this 
fact,  that  if  this  is  what  true  scientific  criticism  is,  —  the  com- 
bination between  internal  and  external  evidence,  —  then  there 
lies  in  that  element  of  combination  the  key  to  all  the  history  of 
biblical  criticism  since  the  eighteenth  century  began.     There  is 
a  puzzle  in  that  history.     For  to  every  honest   student  of  it,  it 
has  been  a  wonder  how,  if  criticism  during  this  time  has  been 
so  scientific,  it  should  have  produced  such  false  results.    That  is 
the  mystery  about  the  skeptical  criticism  of  the  Continent, —  so 
scientific  apparently,  and  yet  so  against  the  historic  Bible  in  its 
results.     But  in  this  element  of  the    combination    of    the    in- 
ternal and  external  in  true  scientific  criticism  lies  the  explana- 
tion.    For  this  so-called  scientific  criticism  has  produced  these 
false  results  because  it  has  laid  a  false  emphasis  on  the  one  side 
or  the  other  of  this  combination.     In   other  words,   it  has  not 
been  truly  scientific.      Let  us  make  this  clear.     As  rationalism 
developed  in  the  past  century,  this  scientific  criticism  began  to 
show  itself.     But  scientific  as  it  was  in  its  combination  of  the 
internal  attention  to  lexicography  and  grammar,  to  diction  and 
thought,  with  the  external  reference  to  historic  testimony,  it 
was  false  in  its  emphasis  on  the  internal  at  the  expense  of  the 
external  side.     Reason  was  the  test.     Historic  fact  was  of  little 
account.     The  subjective  judgment   settled  what  was  and  what 
was  not  Scripture,  let  the  objective  record  be  what  it  might  be. 
That   was  the   attitude  of  rationalism,  and  that  was  the  atti- 
tude of  rationalism's  criticism,  and  so  continued  to  be  more  and 
more  as  rationalism  plunged  downward  into  the  atheism  that 
preceded  the  advent  of  Kant,     And  although  Kant  destroyed 
this  Tower  of  Babel  which  rationalism  had  reared  for  itself, 
and,   by  showing  its  impotence  in  things  divine,  humbled  the 
pride  of  reason  into  the  dust,  yet  the  scientific  criticism  which 
showed  itself  under  his  followers  continued  to  be  false  in  its 
over-pressure  of  the  internal  side.     For  to  Kant's  system  there 
was  no  external  side.     History,  according  to  Kant,  was  merely 
a  dream  ;  for  it  was  made  up  of  facts,  and  facts  were  simply  the 
symbols    with   which    the   poetic  ideas   of    the  mind    clothed 
themselves  so  that   they  could  be  known.     Historic  evidence 


1 1 

was  therefore  worthless.  Subjective  evidence  was  after  all  the 
only  thing.  So  scientific  criticism  proceeded  along  its  false  way. 
To  be  sure,  it  was  touched  with  the  glimmering  light  which  came 
with  what  might  be  called  the  effort  at  a  historical  solution  of 
the  synoptic  problem,  begun  by  Eichhorn,  and  continued  with 
such  brilliancy  by  Schleiermacher;  still  its  false  position  was  not 
abandoned.  Subjectivity  continued  to  be  the  test.  For,  differ- 
ent as  Schleiermacher's  system  was  from  Kant's,  it  was  like  it 
in  the  fact  that  it  made  little  or  nothing  of  historic  fact  and 
much,  if  not  everything,  of  internal  impression.  It  was  a  system 
of  pure  feeling,  and  subjectivity  is  simply  a  necessary  con- 
sequence of  that.  On  along  its  untrue  way,  then,  scientific 
criticism  went  into  the  blank  darkness  of  the  night  which 
Fichte  let  down  upon  the  world  of  thought  ;  through  that  and 
up  again,  if  you  will,  into  the  great  sunless  fog  of  Hegelianism, 
till  it  threw  itself  into  the  mythicism  of  Strauss.  There,  in  its 
finality,  it  was  indeed  what  it  had  always  been,  false ;  false  in 
its  overpressure  of  the  internal  opinion  against  the  external 
fact;  false  in  its  authoritating  of  the. subjective  idea  over  the 
objective  record. 

But  there  a  reaction  set  in,  a  great  reaction,  whose  effect  is 
felt  to-day.  Let  us  get  the  situation  plainly  before  us.  Scholar- 
ship had  been  growing  since  the  Reformation  time.  With  its 
growth  had  come  increasingly  into  use  the  methods  of  scientific 
criticism,  by  which  the  problems  of  the  Bible  books  are  sup- 
posed to  be  considered  in  the  light  of  all  the  evidence  that  can 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  them.  Yet  in  reality  this  criticism 
had  been  unscientific  and  false  ;  because,  while  the  evidence  it 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  Scriptures  was  external  as  well  as 
internal,  it  was  the  latter  to  which  it  gave  the  testing  place. 
The  cause  of  this  unbalance  lay  in  the  philosophies  by  which 
the  criticism  had  been  introduced  into  the  theological  field  and 
under  which  it  had  continued  to  work.  These  philosophies 
were  all  rationalistic,  consequently  all  subjective,  and  their 
rationalism  had  grown  until  it  had  reached  its  climax  in  the 
atheism  which  came  with  Fichte  at  the  end.  Hegel's  pantheism 
was  now  in  the  field.  Under  its  light,  or  its  shadow,  as  you 
please,  Strauss  had  thrown  out  his  mythical  theory  of  the  Gos- 
pels. It  was  subjective  in  its  criticism  like  all  that  had  gone 
before;   because   myth  meant   simply   that   there    is  no    such 


12 

thing  as  written  history.  Men  live  and  move  and  act,  to  be 
sure  ;  but  the  record  we  receive  of  what  they  do  and  say  and 
are  is  merely  the  mind's  poetic  dramatizing  of  it,  its  taking  out 
from  under  the  facts  their  spiritual  meaning  and  giving  us  that 
in  narrative  form.  With  Strauss,  therefore,  gospel  criticism 
was  simply  a  matter  of  subjective  exegesis.  The  history  which 
the  Gospels  gave  was  to  be  found  out,  not  by  collating  the 
facts  presented  in  their  narrative,  but  by  de-spiritualizing  them, 
and  so  getting  at  the  shadowy  substance  that  might  be  found 
remaining. 

Now,  at  this  very  point,  as  a  matter  of  exegesis  and  on  the 
basis  still  of  a  subjective  method,  the  reaction  began.  There 
came  the  critic  of  Tubingen  and  said :  "  This  is  not  the  proper 
interpretation  of  Scripture ;  there  is  something  more  than 
myth  behind  what  it  gives  us ;  there  is  there  an  actuality  of 
history,  however  distorted  it  may  be,  and  we  shall  not  rightly  un- 
derstand the  Scripture  until  we  have  grasped  the  history."  In 
other  words  the  criticism  of  rationalism  had  spun  itself  out, 
had  come  to  its  last  possibility  of  subjectivity,  so  that  the  only 
next  step  that  could  be  taken  was  in  the  other,  the  objective 
direction.  Now  we  are  doing  the  Tubingen  School  no  injustice 
when  we  say  that  in  that  step  lay  its  chance  to  make,  then  and 
there,  the  criticism  of  the  New  Testament  truly  scientific,  to 
correct  the  false  exegesis  of  rationalism  with  a  better  philoso- 
phy, which  would  give  historic  fact  its  proper  place  in  interpre- 
tation, which  would  balance  the  internal  and  the  external  sides. 
But  the  "better  philosophy "  was  not  at  hand.  The  chance 
was  not  taken.  The  change  that  took  place  was  not  correction 
and  balance,  but  reaction  and  an  unbalance  on  the  other  side. 
At  this  point  of  history,  Baur  took  his  stand  and  then  made  his 
history  rule  and  control  and  despotize  his  exegesis.  He 
adopted  a  theory  of  the  history  of  the  early  Church,  namely,  that 
it  was  a  history  of  faction  and  of  fight  between  Paulinism  and 
Petrinism,  started  in  apostolic  times  and  continued  down  with 
bitterness  into  the  succeeding  age,  until,  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  second  century  the  breach  was  healed  and  the  opposing 
parties  came  together  in  a  united  Church.  To  that  theory  he 
made  all  his  exegesis  worship  and  bow  down.  Relentlessly 
through  the  New  Testament  books  he  went.  Those  that 
showed  signs  of  that  early  fight  he  admitted  into  the  canon  as 


'3 

genuine  products  of  the  ajiostolic  age.  Those  which  showed 
no  such  signs  he  cast  unhesitatingly  out.  They  were  written 
not  when  they  professed  to  be,  nor  bv  those  by  whom  they 
claimed  to  be.  At  best  they  were  the  products  of  the  second 
century,  when,  in  the  hope  of  uniting  these  facticns,  the 
story  of  the  Church's  beginnings  was  rewritten  in  a  mediating 
form.  They  were  forgeries.  They  were  apocryphal  frauds. 
No  matter  what  their  exegesis,  to  the  Moloch  of  this  historical 
theory  they  had  to  be  offered  up,  —  and  they  were;  and  biblical 
criticism,  scientific,  falsely  so  called,  entered  upon  what  might 
almost  be  called  a  revolutionized  career.  The  old  reign  of  sub- 
jectivity was  over,  but  another  reign  of  objectivity  had  begun. 
The  false  emphasis  and  pressure  of  the  internal  side  were  car- 
ried over  and  placed  upon  the  external  side.  The  unbalance  of 
a  literary  exegesis  was  given  up  for  the  unbalance  of  a  theoreti- 
cal history. 

That  career  is  over  now.  Tubingenism,  like  rationalism 
before  it,  ran  itself  out.  It  is  dead  now,  and  to-day,  even  in  the 
land  where  it  lived  in  such  glory,  there  is  none  so  poor  as  to 
do  it  reverence.  Like  rationalism,  it  was  met  on  its  own 
ground  and  beaten.  Its  historical  position  was  taken  up,  and 
piece  by  piece  pulled  asunder  and  proven  false.  Ritschl  broke 
the  way,  and  since  his  revolt  all  criticism  has  been  following  in 
his  lead. 

We  have  brought  ourselves  down  to  to-day,  and  the  question 
presses  itself  upon  us,  Now  that  criticism  has  given  up  the 
false  position  of  Tubingenism,  what  is  it  going  to  do  in  the  way 
of  another  position  to  take  its  place .''  For  these  last  dozen 
years  New  Testament  criticism  has  been  in  a  state  of  flux. 
What  is  called  "  the  new  critical  school "  is  in  reality  a 
transitional  school.  It  has  given  up  Tubingen's  historical  posi- 
tion ;  but  it  still  holds  to  Tubingen's  negative  methods  of  work, 
and  consequently  still  reaches  many  of  Tubingen's  negative 
results.  Now  the  question  is.  Where  is  it  going  finally  to  land  ^ 
What  is  going  to  be  the  position  which  it  will  ultimately  agree 
upon  as  the  basis  of  its  critical  work.-*  Some  such  position 
Biblical  criticism  must  have.  What  will  it  be  ?  There  is, 
therefore,  again  before  Biblical  criticism  to-day  just  the  same 
grand  chance  and  opportunity  there  was  before  it  fifty  years 
ago,    when    rationalism's    position    had    been    given    up    and 


14 

Tubingen  came  upon  the  ground,  namely,  the  chance  and 
opportunity  of  correcting  the  falseness  in  the  old  criticism,  and 
establishing  once  and  for  all  time  a  truly  scientific  criticism, 
a  criticism  that  shall  maintain  a  rightful  balance  between  the 
internal  and  the  external  sides,  between  literary  exegesis  and  his- 
torical fact.  Yes,  there's  a  greater  chance,  for,  in  spite  of  all 
the  negative  results  that  Tiibingenism  has  produced,  the  truth 
has  made  immeasurable  gains  during  these  fifty  years.  The 
old  position  of  rationalism  can  never  be  taken  again,  the  posi- 
tion, namely,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  history,  that  the  Gos- 
pels are  legends,  and  that  Christ  is  a  myth.  Tubingen  destroyed 
that  by  its  fight  for  history,  false  though  the  history  was  for 
which  it  fought.  And  the  old  position  of  Tubingen  can  never  be 
taken  again,  namely,  that  the  history  of  the  early  Church  was 
such  as  to  make  impossible  the  writing  of  the  New  Testament  in 
the  apostolic  age.  Ritschl  and  his  modern  critical  school  have 
destroyed  that,  so  that  criticism  stands  advantaged  to-day  far 
beyond  criticism  half  a  century  ago.  There  has  been  gained  for 
it  what  adds  immensely  to  its  possibility  of  coming  to  a  true 
scientific  position,  where  a  true  exegesis  shall  be  united  to  a 
true  history  of  fact.  Now,  is  that  position  going  to  be  taken  } 
That  is  the  question. 

We  come  thus  to  what  may  rightly  claim  to  be  the  interest- 
ing part  of  our  discussion, —  the  signs  of  the  times.  We  do  not 
wish  to  pose  as  a  prophet ;  that  is  always  a  venturesome  under- 
taking and  amounts  generally  to  little  or  nothing  in  the  end. 
If  there  is  to  be  any  prophesying,  we  wish  it  to  be  done  by  the 
facts  which  we  shall  give.  These  facts  are  the  signs.  Men 
may  read  them  for  themselves. 

Some  ten  years  ago  a  Tiibingen  professor,  by  the  name  of 
Volter,  startled  the  critical  world  by  cutting  loose  from  the  old 
Tubingen  idea  of  the  Apocalypse  of  John  and  saying  that, 
instead  of  its  being  one  integral  composition,  it  was  made  up  of 
many  different  ones.  In  support  of  his  claim  he  produced  a 
scheme  of  the  book's  make-up,  which  scheme  he  modified,  a  few 
years  later,  into  what  may  be  briefly  given  as  follows  :  (i)  There 
was,  first  of  all,  what  could  be  called  an  original  Apocalypse 
from  the  pen  of  the  Apostle  John,  written  about  the  year  65,  or 
perhaps  66.     (2)   Into  this  original  Apocalypse  was  interpolated 


15 

another,  from  the  same  apostolic  author,  but  written  some 
three  years  later,  68  or  69.  Both  Apocalypses  were  without 
any  trace  of  chiliasm,  in  the  stricter  sense  of  the  word,  and 
made  no  mention  of  a  second  Resurrection  nor  of  a  new  Jeru- 
salem. (3)  In  Trajan's  time,  however,  this  double  Apocalypse 
was  worked  over  by  a  Jewish  Christian,  who  believed  in  chi- 
liasm, and  looked  for  a  second  Resurrection  and  for  a  new  Jerusa- 
lem, but  did  not  look  upon  Christ  as  the  slain  Lamb, — at  least 
did  not  apply  that  name  to  him  (4)  In  Hadrian's  time  there 
was  another  recension  by  another  Jewish  Christian,  who  held, 
as  his  predecessor  had  done,  to  chiliasm  and  a  second  Resur- 
rection and  a  new  Jerusalem,  but  who,  unlike  him,  represented 
Christ  as  the  Lamb  of  God.  (5)  A  last  redaction  occurred 
about  140  A.  D.,  in  the  time  of  Antoninus,  and  was  charac- 
terized by  a  hostility  to  Paulinism.  In  this  final  form  we  have 
it  in  the  New  Testament.  This,  to  be  sure,  is  a  bold  position, 
one  that  takes  a  good  deal  of  ingenuity  to  follow,  and  a  great 
deal  more  to  defend.     But  this  is  the  position  Volter  took. 

The  same  year  that  he  produced  this  modified  scheme  of  the 
Apocalypse,  in  1885,  Vischer,  a  student  at  Giessen,  under 
Harnack's  instruction,  caught  the  ear  of  his  honored  professor, 
and  in  fact  of  the  critical  world,  by  producing  a  paper  on  the 
composition  of  this  same  book  of  Revelation,  in  which  he  held 
not  merely  that  it  was  a  derived  book,  but  that  its  original  was 
not  of  Christian,  but  of  Jewish  origin  ;  and  that  it  had  come  to 
its  present  Christian  form  by  its  redactor's  inserting  in  it  new 
material,  which  changed  its  meaning.  The  eleventh  and  twelfth 
chapters,  which  are  the  center-point  of  Vischer's  argument,  give 
a  picture  that  he  holds  is  unintelligible  on  the  basis  of  a  Chris- 
tian origin,  but  easily  explains  itself  when  we  assume  it  came 
from  a  Jewish  pen.  The  eleventh  chapter,  as  you  remember, 
represents  the  Holy  City  as  given  over  to  heathen,  despoiling 
it  for  the  space  of  three  and  one-half  years.  But  the  Temple,  its 
altar,  and  its  worshipers  are  specially  reserved  and  saved  from 
that  fate.  Great  wonders  finally  came  down  from  Heaven  in 
judgment  upon  the  heathen  and  produce  repentance  on  the 
part  of  those  who  were  left  alive  in  the  city.  This,  Vischer 
holds,  is  thoroughly  Jewish.  To  be  sure,  verse  eight  represents 
Jerusalem  as  the  spiritual  Sodom  and  Egypt,  where  the  Lord 
was  crucified  ;  but  Vischer  holds  that  this  verse  has  been  inter- 


i6 

polated  to  turn  the  chapter  to  Christian  use.  The  twelfth 
chapter,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the  great  mystery  of 
Heaven,  —  the  woman  with  her  child  and  the  Dragon  fighting 
against  it.  The  child  is  caught  up  into  Heaven,  and  the 
Dragon  is  thrown  into  war  with  Michael  and  his  hosts.  He  is 
overpowered  by  them  and  is  cast  out  upon  the  earth,  and  in 
his  rage  wars  again  against  the  woman  and  the  remnant  of  her 
seed,  but  prevails  not.  Now  this,  Vischer  holds,  is  the  prophecy 
of  a  Messiah,  but  a  Messiah  who  is  to  come  in  the  future,  at  the 
end  of  the  days  ;  not  one  who  has  already  come,  and  is  simply 
to  re-appear.  It  is  therefore  the  prophecy  of  a  Jewish  Messiah, 
not  of  a  Christian  one.  To  be  sure,  verse  eleven  speaks  of  the 
blood  of  the  Lamb,  but  this  Vischer  says  again  is  the  redactor's 
interpolation,  to  put  it  into  a  Christian  form.  And  then,  out- 
side of  these  two  chapters,  numerous  passages  are  cited,  which, 
to  Vischer's  mind,  show  unmistakable  evidence  of  having  come 
from  one  who  was  a  Jew  and  wrote  for  the  Jewish  people,  and 
not  from  one  who  wrote,  as  the  apostle  John  must  have  done, 
as  a  Christian  and  for  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  indeed  a 
critical  marvel,  and  Vischer  admits  it  so  himself,  how  a 
Christian  writer,  wishing  to  produce  a  Christian  prophecy  of  the 
future,  should  have  contented  himself  with  dressing  up  a 
prophecy  written  from  a  Jewish  point  of  view.  A  more  un- 
likely literary  process  could  hardly  be  imagined.  But  we  are 
simply  presenting  the  position  which  our  critic  holds. 

This  treatment  of  the  Apocalypse  was,  of  course,  agreed  in 
by  Harnack,  Vischer's  instructor,  and  was  followed,  one  year 
later,  1886,  by  a  similar  treatment  of  the  same  book  by 
Weizacker,  professor  at  Tiibingen,  in  which  treatment  the  three 
series  of  seven  signs,  seven  seals,  seven  trumpets,  and  seven 
vials  are  held  to  be  the  original  nucleus  of  the  composition, 
around  which  all  the  rest  of  the  book  was  afterwards  gathered. 
And  the  next  year,  1887,  there  was  added  yet  another  similar 
treatment  of  the  same  book  from  the  pen  of  Professor  Pfleiderer, 
of  Berlin,  who  held,  as  Volter  had  done,  that  the  book  was 
made  up  of  several  different  Apocalypses  pieced  together,  and 
not,  as  Vischer  had  done,  that  it  was  one  original  Apocalypse 
worked  over  into  its  present  shape. 

All  these  productions,  we  see,  were  centred  upon  the  Book  of 
the  Revelation.     But,  one  year  after  Pfieiderer's  book  appeared. 


17 

1 888,  there  was  produced  a  like  attack  upon  Paul's  Epistle 
to  Galatians.  It  came  from  the  pen  of  Steck,  professor  at  the 
University  of  Bern,  and  held  that  this  Epistle  was  a  composite 
writing,  having  as  its  documentary  basis  the  previously  written 
Epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  and  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  ; 
none  of  these  four  Epistles  being  of  Pauline  origin,  but  all 
being  the  work  of  a  certain  Christian  school,  and  produced  in 
the  first  half  of  the  second  century.  In  support  of  his  claim 
he  said  that  it  was  evident  that  the  speech  against  Peter  in  the 
second  chapter,  and  the  argument  for  justification  by  faith  in 
the  third  chapter,  and  the  allegory  of  the  bond-woman  and  the 
free  in  the  fourth  chapter,  were  all  derived  from  Romans ;  there 
being  borrowings  here  and  there,  perhaps,  from  the  Corinthians, 
while  the  last  two  chapters  of  the  Epistle,  the  fifth  and  sixth,  were 
derived  from  these  Corinthian  Epistles,  with  borrowings  here 
and  there  from  Romans — a  reckless  position,  of  course,  for  any 
scholarly  exegete  to  take,  but  nevertheless  the  position  taken. 

Now  I  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  these  two  attacks 
were  significant  from  the  fact  that,  from  the  beginning  of 
Tiibingenism,  these  two  books,  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Galatians,  had  been  admitted  as  genuinely  the  product  of 
the  apostolic  age,  being,  in  fact,  the  two  pillars  on  which,  it  was 
held,  the  entire  historic  New  Testament  building  was  reared. 
Thus  the  two  chief  points  in  the  historic  literature  of  the  New 
Testament  have  been  attacked,  and  both  of  them  on  this 
documentary  basis.  That  would  be  remarkable  enough,  but 
it  is  not  all. 

In  1890,  two  years  after  Stcck's  attack  on  Galatians,  there 
was  published  an  attack  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  which 
was  even  more  decidedly  documentary  in  its  form,  and  so 
approached  much  more  nearly  to  the  treatment  of  the 
Apocalypse  at  the  hands  of  Volter  and  Vischer,  In  fact,  it  came 
from  Volter  himself,  and,  in  brief,  held  that  the  Epistle,  instead 
of  being  one  letter  from  the  one  apostle,  was  made  up  of  seven 
different  letters, —  a  real  apostolic  core-letter,  found  scattered 
about  in  various  passages  throughout  the  Epistle,  and  six  other 
letters  by  as  many  different  unknown  authors,  some  of  them 
Gentile  Christians,  and  some  of  them  Jewish,  found  in  the  various 
remaining  parts  of  the  Epistle. 

Again,  one  year  later,  1891,  there  appeared  from  the  pen  of 


i8 

Professor  Spitta,  of  the  University  of  Strassburg,  a  discussion 
of  the  Book  of  Acts,  that,  in  its  theory  of  the  sources  of  the 
book,  went  beyond  all  previous  theories,  and  said  that  before 
its  writer  lay  two  documents,  both  of  which  covered  the  whole 
history  from  the  founding  of  the  Church  at  Jerusalem  to  Paul's 
arrival  at  Rome.  From  these  two  documents  the  writer  of 
Acts  had  derived  practically  all  his  material,  simply  playing  the 
part  of  a  redactor  and  piecing  the  two  accounts  together  and 
making  them  read,  as  well  as  he  could,  like  one  narrative. 

And  now,  in  the  last  year  or  so,  has  appeared  the  very  able 
and  deservedly  renowned  presentation  of  the  Teachings  of 
Jesus  by  Professor  Wendt,  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  in 
which  presentation,  naturally,  the  origin  and  composition  of  the 
Gospels  are  discussed,  and  in  which  discussion  not  only  the 
well-known  theory  as  to  the  documentary  origin  of  the  Synop- 
tics is  presented,  but  in  addition,  the  theory  of  an  original  docu- 
ment for  the  Gospel  of  John,  which  document  was  of  the 
apostle's  own  authorship  and  was  added  to,  from  various  other 
sources,  and  edited  after  his  death  by  scholars  of  his  school,  its 
redacted  and  edited  form  being  that  which  appears  in  the 
New  Testament.* 

Now  all  this,  remarkable  as  it  is,  might  not  after  all  be  con- 
sidered significant  enough  to  constitute  "  the  signs  of  the 
times,"  were  it  not  for  one  or  two  things  that  are  to  be  con- 
sidered in  connection  with  them.  i.  The  first  is  :  That  these 
views,  above  given,  do  not  represent  mere  local  points  of  criti- 
cism ;  but  rather  general  principles  which  might  be  critically 
applicable  everywhere  throughout  the  New  Testament,  e.  g., 
Volter  does  not  hold  simply  that,  among  the  New  Testament 
books,  the  Apocalypse  and  Romans  happen  to  be  of  docu- 
mentary origin.  It  is  with  him  rather  a  general  literary  idea 
which  he  is  liable  to  apply  to  all  canonical  and  early  Christian 
literature.  He  has  applied  it  already  to  the  Barnabas  Epistle, 
and  his  attack  on  Romans  is  only  a  part  of  a  similar  treatment 
proposed  by  him  for  all  the  four  chief  epistles  of  Paul.  In 
fact,  in  the  same  work  with  Romans,  Galatians  is  treated  and 
relegated,  like  Romans,  to  a  redactor's  hands,  being  in  his 
view,  just  as  in  Steck's,  a  clumsy  compilation  from  Romans 
and  the  two  Corinthian  Epistles.f     And  so  Steck  does  not  hold 

*See  in  addition  to  these.  HJiltzmann's  treatment  of  the  relation  of  Colossians  and  Ephesians. 
t  See  his  article  on  the  composition  of  Philippians.     (Theol.  Tijdscr.,  1892,  II.) 


19 

that  uf  these  four  epistles  of  Paul,  Galatians  is  the  only  one 
that  is  a  compilation.  This  is  a  literary  principle,  which,  in  his 
view,  runs  throuj^h  them  all.  Galatians  is  derived  from  the  two 
Corinthians  and  Romans  ;  while  the  two  Corinthians  are  in 
turn  ilerived  from  Romans,  and  the  whole  four  are  preceded  by 
the  Book  of  Acts  and  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  to  which  they  are 
all  more  or  less  indebted.  So  again  Spitta's  treatment  of  Acts  is 
simply  a  single  application  of  a  general  idea  which  he  hokls.  It 
has  already  been  applied  by  him  in  a  similar  treatment  of  the 
Apocalypse,  and  he  plans  to  follow  it  up  with  another  similar 
treatment  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  These  are  not  sporadic 
critical  attacks.  They  indicate  rather  a  general  critical  disease, 
which  has  the  possibility  of  becoming  epidemic. 

2.  Further,  this  is  not  something  entirely  new,  sprung  up 
in  our  modern  days, —  a  critical  fad.  As  far  back  as  Eichhorn  and 
Schleiermacher,  in  the  days  of  rationalism,  this  documentary 
theory  was  suggested  as  applicable  to  the  Synoptic  Gospels. 
Even  at  the  beginning  of  Tiibingenism  the  same  theory  was 
advanced  by  Weisse  as  possible  of  application  to  Paul's  epistles. 
And,  though  it  found  no  following  then,  being  overshadowed 
by  Baur's  own  theory  of  tendency-origin,  yet,  a  generation  later, 
when  Tubingen  was  giving  up  the  ghost,  this  same  theory,  as 
applied  to  the  chief  Pauline  epistles,  was  revived  by  the  Hol- 
land critics  and  has  been  continued  by  them,  and  by  the  French 
critics  also,  along  parallel  lines  with  the  Germans  whom  we 
have  mentioned  above.  In  other  words,  this  is  a  general  coming 
into  shape  and  form  of  previous  hints  and  suggestions  which 
has  the  possibility  of  becoming  permanent. 

3.  But  there  is  yet  another  fact  to  be  considered,  namely, 
that  a  parallel  to  this  criticism  lies  in  the  Pentateuchal  criti- 
cism of  the  Old  Testament  to-day.  To  be  sure,  from  the  time 
of  Astruc,  in  the  previous  century,  the  idea  of  documentary 
sources  for  the  Pentateuch  had  been  more  or  less  urged  by 
Continental  criticism.  But  then  nothing  more  was  meant  than 
that  there  were  documents  among  the  sources  from  which 
Moses  himself,  or  at  least  a  contemporary  of  his,  had  compiled 
these  opening  books  of  the  Bible.  Not  until  Tiibingen's  time 
was  the  suggestion  made  that  this  documentary  composition  of 
the  Pentateuch  might  be  later  than  Moses's  time.  But,  just  as  it 
had  been  with  the  hints  at  that  time  made  about  New  Testament 


20 

documentary  criticism  this  suggestion  obtained  no  following. 
In  fact,  Old  Testament  work  was  neglected,  in  Tubingen's 
attention  to  the  New  Testament,  until  a  generation  had  gone 
past  and  Tiibingen  was  departing  this  life,  when  Pentateuchal 
criticism  revived  and  revived  along  the  lines  of  this  suggestion, 
namely,  that  the  composite  parts  of  the  Pentateuch  were  of  later 
date  than  Moses's  time,  that,  in  fact,  (which  is  now  the  modern 
claim  regarding  them,)  they  represented  a  development  of 
Israel's  religion,  being  landmarks  along  the  way,  the  documents 
containing  the  simpler  religious  and  ethical  ideas  coming  first, 
those  containing  the  more  complex  and  developed  ones  coming 
later.  Now  this  idea  of  development  is  the  very  idea  that,  to  a 
certain  degree  at  least,  lies  behind  the  different  documents  that 
are  supposed  to  make  up  our  New  Testament  books.  They  are 
said  to  represent  the  development  of  Christianity,  to  show  the 
growth  of  its  religious  ideas,  to  make  it  evident  and  plain  that 
theology  in  the  apostles'  times  was  a  much  simpler  affair  than 
the  New  Testament  would  have  us  believe.  These  docu- 
mentary ideas,  therefore,  which  we  have  here  in  New  Testa- 
ment criticism,  are  not,  after  all,  isolated  ideas.  They  have 
their  counterpart  in  Old  Testament  criticism.  They  are 
part  of  a  general  critical  movement  which  has  come  into  real 
activity  in  these  latter  days,  and  is  claiming  the  possibility  of 
sweeping  all  other  criticisms  before  it,  and  forcing  them  off  the 
field. 

4.  And,  if  there  is  a  disposition  to  make  light  of  this 
claim,  we  call  attention  to  this  idea  of  development  which  goes 
along  with  these  documents  and,  as  our  final  consideration, 
submit  that  this  simply  shows  that  there  stands  connected  with 
all  this  documentary  criticism,  in  Old  Testament  and  New  Tes- 
ment  alike,  the  philosophy  of  Evolution,  and  that  philosophy  is 
to  be  reckoned  with  to-day.  Tiibingenism  was  based  upon 
Hegelianism  and  fell,  because  its  philosophy  was  not  only 
unpopular,  but  was  untrue.  This  modern  criticism  finds  its 
strong  support  in  Evolution,  and  Evolution  is  popular  and,  in 
its  theistic  and  Christian  form,  is  most  likely  to  prove  true. 
In  view,  therefore,  of  these  considerations,  I  think  it  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  these  instances  of  documentary  criti- 
cism which  we  have  before  us  in  the  New  Testament  are  sig- 
nificant enough  to  constitute  "signs  of  the  times." 


21 

But  if  so,  then  what  do  they  portend  ?  Which  brinejs  us  back 
to  ourqucstion,  What  position  is  criticism  going  now  to  take  as  the 
basis  of  its  critical  work  ?  Do  these  signs  show  that  criticism 
now  is  going  to  embrace  its  chance  and  opportunity  of  becom- 
ing truly  scientific  ?  Do  they  give  us  reason  to  believe  that 
now  it  is  going  to  establish  a  right  and  proper  combination  of 
internal  and  external  evidence,  and  so  unite  a  true  exegesis,  on 
the  one  side,  to  a  true  history  of  fact,  on  the  other?  If  the 
facts  say  anything,  they  say  very  plainly  "  No."  Criticism  is 
missing  its  chance.  The  combination  will  not  be  made,  for  in 
this  documentary  criticism  which  it  is  carrying  on  there  is 
being  placed  an  over-emphasis  on  the  side  of  internal  evidence. 
The  process  is  showing  itself  to  be  purely  subjective.  If  the 
partitions  made  of  these  New  Testament  books  are  examined, 
they  will  be  found  to  be  based  on  absolutely  arbitrary  internal 
principles.  If  the  redactors  who  are  brought  upon  the  field  in 
the  various  recensions  of  these  books  are  investigated,  they  will 
be  seen  to  be  simply  the  creations  of  subjectivity.  Volter's 
and  Vischer's  and  Weizacker's  and  Pfleiderer's  dissections  of  the 
Apocalypse  are  internal  pieces  of  work  at  the  expense  of  the 
external  evidence  to  the  early  integrity  of  the  book.  Steck's 
partition  of  Galatians  is  a  purely  internal  study,  which  has 
already  collapsed  beneath  the  scientific  faults  which  have 
been  proved  against  it.  So  Volter's  breaking  up  of  Romans 
into  its  seven  letters  is  a  subjective  process,  which,  if  it  were 
not  seriously  meant,  might  almost  be  considered  a  companion 
to  the  satire  on  this  sort  of  criticism  which  the  professor-elect 
to  the  chair  of  Systematic  Theology  in  this  institution  has 
already  published.  And  so  with  Spitta's  Book  of  Acts  and 
Wendt's  Fourth  Gospel,  They  are  an  over-pressure  of  the 
internal  side,  on  principles  which  I  believe  to  be  in  error. 

As  Tiibingenism,  then,  over-emphasized  and  over-pressed 
the  objective  element  in  its  criticism  and  made  that  false 
objectivity  ride  all  its  exegesis,  so  this  documentary  criticism 
is  over-emphasizing  and  over-pressing  the  subjective  element 
and  making  that  false  subjectivity  ride  all  its  history.  It  is 
deciding  authorship  by  lexicon  and  grammar,  and  canonicity  by 
literary  style.  It  is  saying  that  different  words  mean  different 
authors,  and  similar  words  mean  forgeries.  It  is  holding  that 
documents  are  to  be  dated  by  their  diction  and  that,  because  the 


22 

Gospels  and  the  Acts  are  histories,  they  must  have  been  written 
before  the  Epistles.  It  maintains  that  no  writer  can  write  save 
in  one  way  at  one  time.  It  magnifies  differences  therefore  and 
intensifies  peculiarities  ;  it  refines  and  over-refines,  splits  and 
double  splits,  till  it  forgets  that  there  is  about  its  narrow 
view-point  a  historic  horizon  that  cannot  be  ignored,  if  the  light 
of  truth  is  to  flood  the  sacred  page. 

What  then  is  the  outlook  for  to-day.''  i.  First  of  all,  sum- 
ming up  the  facts  which  we  have  presented,  the  prospect  is 
that  we  are  about  to  enter  upon  a  phase  of  New  Testament 
criticism  similar,  in  its  outlines  at  least,  to  the  criticism  at  pres- 
ent working  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  transitional  period 
is  coming  to  its  end.  A  new  period  is  opening.  The  confused 
efforts  of  the  Ritschl-Baur  school  are  crystallizing  into  the 
definite  movement  of  this  school  of  Volter,  Vischer,  and  Steck. 
Hegelianism  is  yielding  the  way  to  Evolution,  and  documentary 
analysis,  as  we  have  grown  familiar  with  it  in  Pentateuchal 
criticism,  is  being  applied  largely,  if  not  entirely,  to  the  New 
Testament  books.  It  will  doubtless  lead  to  an  attempt  to 
reconstruct  New  Testament  history,  as  it  has  led  in  the  Old 
Testament  to  an  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  history  of  Israel. 
But  that  will  be  a  difficult  task  to  carry  through,  for  Tubingen 
has  already  fought  that  battle  of  reconstructed  New  Testament 
history,  and  has  been  defeated,  and,  in  that  defeat  of  Tubingen, 
the  facts  of  New  Testament  history  have  been  so  clearly  and  so 
decisively  established  that  not  only  will  Tubingen's  battle  never 
be  fought  again,  but  no  new  battle  on  that  field  will  be  likely  to 
have  much  success.  Its  present  phase,  however,  is  literary 
rather  than  historical,  a  study  of  the  documents  themselves 
rather  than  of  the  history  which  lies  behind  them.  2.  Second, 
summing  up  the  history  of  New  Testament  criticism  from  the 
beginning  of  rationalism's  abuse  of  it,  this  new  phase  of  New 
Testament  criticism  will  end,  just  as  all  other  phases  of 
unscientific  criticism  have  ended,  in  its  own  discomfiture  and 
defeat.  I  shall  not,  of  course,  be  misunderstood.  I  believe,  just 
as  every  Biblical  student  believes,  in  higher  criticism.  It  is 
simply  a  branch  of  exegetical  science,  to  be  used  just  as  any  of 
its  other  branches  are  used.  I  recognize  and  welcome  the 
results  which  its  use  has  brought  to  the  gain  of  the  truth  of 
Jesus    Christ,    just   as     I    recognize    and    regret    the   results 


23 

which  its  abuse  has  sent  in  the  other  direction.  But  in  the  end 
that  truth  must  always  gain,  whatever  struggle  and  conflict, 
whatever  apparent  disaster  and  defeat  may  come  upon  it.  It 
always  has  done  so.  It  gained  by  the  rationalistic  criticism  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  utterly  unscientific  as  that  criticism 
was  ;  for  when  it  was  found  that  there  must  be  something  more 
in  the  substantiating  of  the  Bible  documents  than  the  mere 
usage  of  the  Church,  right  though  that  usage  might  be,  that 
there  was  a  surer  ground  on  which  the  Bible  was  to  be  held,  the 
deeper  drifts  of  reason  and  the  broader  sweeps  of  the  inde- 
structible facts  of  mind  and  soul,  then  rationalism  helped  to 
that  discovery,  though  she  recklessly  leaped  beyond  it  all  and 
went  to  her  own  destruction.  In  that  discovery  there  was  a 
gain  for  the  truth.  Again,  when  it  was  found  that  there  must 
be  yet  something  more  in  the  substantiating  of  the  Bible  docu- 
ments than  the  mere  truths  of  reason,  that  there  was  a  still 
surer  ground,  the  broad,  strong,  certain  ground  of  history,  then 
to  that  discovery  Tiibingen  helped,  though  she  hung  herself 
with  the  false  history  which  she  held.  In  that  discovery  again 
there  was  a  gain  for  the  truth.  Now,  apparently,  it  is  being 
found  that,  in  addition  to  the  proofs  of  reason  and  of  history, 
there  is  to  be  gained  yet  surer  ground  still,  ground  yet  more 
certain  and  more  sound  —  that  there  is  to  be  secured  the  literary 
proofs  from  the  documents  themselves.  Good !  Then  this 
documentary  criticism  will  help  to  its  discovery,  though  just 
in  so  far  forth  as  it  is  unscientific  in  its  principles  and  methods 
of  work,  it  must  go  to  its  own  destruction,  while  it  leaves 
the  same  grand,  everlasting  truth  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  one 
and  only  gainer  in  the  end. 

I  stand  therefore  this  evening  and  say :  Important  as  this 
new  phase  of  criticism  undoubtedly  is,  deep  searching  as  its 
work  will  of  necessity  be,  I  see  nothing  in  the  future  to  fear. 
From  what  it  has  shown  of  itself,  in  the  attempts  it  has  already 
made,  I  believe  it  to  be  unscientific,  and  therefore  destined 
to  destroy  itself,  while  the  truth  remains  firmer  in  its  historic 
integrity  than  before.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  this  result  is 
going  to  be  reached  without  cooperation  on  the  Church's  part,  and 
in  that  cooperation  there  are  two  courses  which  the  Church  can 
pursue.  She  can  stand  by  and  let  this  new  criticism  have  its  own 
way,  occupying  the  field,  controlling  the  literature,  holding  the 


24 

scholarship,  until  it  has  worn  itself  out  with  its  own  vagaries 
and  dies.  Then  she  can  come  in  and,  repairing  the  damage,  say: 
"  See  what  a  victory  I  have  gained."  Or  she  can  come  into  the 
struggle  at  the  start,  contesting  the  field,  placing  literature 
against  literature  and  confronting  scholarship  with  scholarship, 
until  this  criticism  is  compelled  to  yield  its  unscholarly  position 
and  give  up  its  unscientific  fight.  Then,  when  truth  has  gained 
the  battle,  she  can  be  grateful  to  God  that  she  was  allowed  to  be 
an  instrument  to  that  end. 

This  latter  would  be  the  better  way,  would  be  the  shorter 
and  the  quicker  way.  But  to  undertake  and  accomplish  it,  the 
Church  needs  now  and  to-day  to  go  to  her  colleges  and  her 
seminaries  and  train  her  men  into  a  scientific  thoroughness  of 
lexicon  and  grammar,  of  philology  and  literary  style,  of  exegesis 
and  Biblical  theology,  that  they  may  show  the  falseness  of  un- 
scientific critics,  and,  by  being  scientific  themselves,  support  the 
truth  they  hold.  The  Church  can  afford  to  lose  no  time.  She 
can  afford  to  spare  no  means.  She  can  afford  to  do  but  one 
thing  and  that  is,  with  the  consciousness  of  her  great  respon- 
sibility, to  make  known  to  the  world  the  Word  of  God,  with  the 
conviction  that  the  Master  who  has  sent  her  into  the  world  will 
give  her  His  Spirit  to  enable  her  to  know  that  Word,  to  take 
that  Word,  and  in  the  light  of  all  that  has  been  gained  for  its 
historic  truth  in  the  past,  and  in  the  blaze  of  all  that  can  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  its  historic  truth  to-day,  establish  that 
Word  in  her  own  convictions,  and  then  preach  it  to  the  souls  of 
men. 

God  giving  us  the  wisdom  and  the  grace,  we  will  try  to  do 
this  here,  not  merely  that  we  may  supply  the  Church  with 
scholarship;  but  much  more,  that  into  the  Church's  pulpits 
may  go  those  whose  faith  in  the  Word  is  strong,  because  they 
know  that  Word  to  be  true,  and  who  keep  strong  their  peoples' 
faith  in  that  Word  because  they  preach  them  its  truth. 


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